‘Yes. They know you’re here.’
In a single movement the girl got up from the bed and grabbed hold of a small axe that was lying on the floor. It showed signs of recent use. She moved towards Jerry.
‘Stop!’ he said. Theres stopped. ‘What are you thinking of doing with that axe?’
Theres raised and lowered the axe. ‘The big people.’
Jerry moved back a step to make sure he was out of range, and said, ‘OK. OK. I’m going to ask you a question now, and I want an honest answer.’ Jerry snorted at his own stupidity. Had he ever heard Theres lie? No. He didn’t believe she was even capable of lying. And yet it was a question he needed her to answer. He pointed at the axe.
‘Are you intending to hit me with that?’
Theres shook her head.
‘Are you intending to hit me or stab me or…chop me up in any way?’
Another shake of the head. Sussing out the reason why Theres regarded him differently from his parents could wait for a later conversation. Right now all Jerry needed to know was that being around her didn’t mean he was in mortal danger. To be on the safe side, he added, ‘Good. Because if you do anything to me, the big people will come and get you. Straight away. Bang, get it? You are not to touch me, is that clear?’
Theres nodded, and Jerry realised that what he had just said was true, basically. He told Theres to put on some shoes, and made sure he kept his eye on her as they left the room.
When he opened the outside door Theres stood there as if she was glued to the floor, refusing to move and staring out into the darkness with big eyes. Enticing her, exhorting her to move forward didn’t help, so instead he pretended to listen hard, then whispered with simulated fear, ‘Come on, sis! They’re coming, they’re coming! I can hear their machines!’
At last Theres unglued her feet from the floor, and Jerry had to move out of the way as she rushed towards the doorway with the axe firmly clutched to her chest. She carried on up the garden, looking to right and left, adrenaline-fuelled panic in every movement. Jerry made the most of the opportunity and fled towards the forest with her.
Jerry had a childhood memory of an opening among the trees about five hundred metres into the forest, and he managed to find it with the help of the torch. The branches of a huge oak hung down over the glade, and the ground was covered in dry leaves. He pulled out the sleeping bag, unzipped it and showed Theres how to crawl inside. Then he gave her the torch, the bread and the caviar.
‘OK sis,’ he said. ‘You’ve caused a hell of a problem, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to fix this. But you’re to stay here, OK? I’ll come back as soon as I can. Do you understand?’
Theres shook her head violently, and glanced anxiously around the glade where the fir trees stood in dark ranks. ‘Not go.’
‘Yes,’ said Jerry. ‘I have to. Otherwise we’ve had it. If I don’t go… The big people will come and take both of us if I don’t go. I have to go back and fool them. That’s just the way it is.’
Theres wrapped her arms around her knees and curled up into a ball. Jerry crouched down and tried to catch her eye, but without success. He picked up the torch and shone it on her. She was shivering, as if she was terribly cold.
It was always going to end up like this.
What he didn’t understand was why he had regarded the whole situation as normal for such a long time. Why he had got used to the fact that his parents had a girl in the cellar, a girl who was now thirteen years old and didn’t know a thing about the world. Why this had become perfectly natural.
And now he was stuck with the consequences. A trembling girl he was going to have to leave alone in the forest, his parents chopped up into little bits back at home. He could have put a stop to it all long ago. And yet he had to carry on now, because there was nothing else he could do. He got up. Theres grabbed at his trouser leg.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I have to. They’ll come for us otherwise. Both of us. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ He pointed at the sleeping bag. ‘Keep warm.’
Theres mumbled, ‘The big people are dangerous. You’ll be dead.’
Jerry couldn’t help smiling. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll be back.’ He didn’t dare delay any longer, so without any further words of farewell he turned and left Theres in the glade.
Behind him Theres held out the axe, as if she were offering it to him. For protection. But Jerry had already disappeared in the darkness, and for the first time since she was found, the girl was alone in the vast outdoors.
Five minutes after he got back in the house, Jerry called the police. Five minutes which he used for something he hadn’t yet had the opportunity to do. To grieve. With his head drooping he stood motionless in the middle of the hallway as a lump formed in his stomach. He let it grow, tasting its colour and weight.
Without moving a muscle, in the middle of the hallway in his childhood home. All the times he had taken off his shoes in this hallway, the shoes getting bigger and bigger. The aroma of cooking from the kitchen, or bread baking. Happy or sad, coming home from nursery or school. Never again. Never again in this house, never again with his parents.
The lump rose and fell inside him. He gave himself five minutes to take his leave of everything. He stood completely still. He didn’t cry. After five minutes he went to the telephone in the kitchen, rang the emergency number and explained that he had just got home and found his mother and father brutally murdered. He didn’t recognise his own voice.
Then he sat down on a chair in the kitchen. While he waited for the police, he tried to work out how he ought to behave. What he would say wasn’t difficult. He had found them on the floor of the cellar, end of story, he didn’t know anymore. He’d gone into shock and it had been twenty minutes before he called the police.
It was the strange voice he had heard coming out of his mouth that worried him. How should he talk, how should he behave? He calmed himself down with the thought that there was probably no set pattern. Double murders were unlikely to be an everyday occurrence for the Norrtälje police, so they would have nothing to compare with, nothing to make his behaviour appear suspicious.
However, he did get up from his chair and go outside to wait. A normal person wouldn’t want to sit in the house where his parents lay murdered.
Would they?
He knew nothing, and could only hope that whoever was on their way knew nothing either.
As he had expected he immediately became the prime suspect and was taken into custody. He was interrogated in minute detail over what had happened when he found his mother and father, and what he had done during the course of the day.
He had hoped he would be released after a few hours, but that didn’t happen. The bodies had to be removed and the forensic pathologists had to do their job, and the information he had given had to be checked. Jerry spent the night on a bunk bed in a cell, where grief over his parents and anxiety over Theres kept him wide awake.
In the middle of the night he was brought up for further questioning with regard to the fact that they had found traces of someone living in the cellar. Clothes, jars of baby food, spoons with comparatively recent remains of food on them. What did he know about this? He knew nothing. He didn’t visit his parents all that often, and had no idea what they got up to.
Since he had been expecting these questions, and suspected there would be fingerprints, he admitted that he had been in his old room a few times. But he hadn’t seen any signs of anyone else living there, not a thing. This was something new to him, a complete bloody mystery, in fact. Who did they think had been living there?
He was taken back to his cell to pick more foam out of his mattress, and towards morning he was released without a world of explanation. He was asked to stay in the Norrtälje area.